


The Heartless Doctor and Headless Rider

by Sleepiestpoet



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Alternate Ending, Bitter-Sweet?, F/M, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 14:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7108432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepiestpoet/pseuds/Sleepiestpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate Ending to Durararax2 in which (spoiler) someone keeps their head and a relationship progresses regardless, because man the ending to the anime is terrible. I'm still salty about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heartless Doctor and Headless Rider

In the city of Ikebukuro lived an urban legend, The Black Rider. She walked like a normal human, looked human (from the neck down, at least), and loved like a human, but she was not human. She spent her nights wrapped in a blackness beyond night as she rode her motorbike, and was happy. She chose to make her home among the ever-shifting battleground of city blocks and streets. She had come to them in search of her missing head, but gave up her search in exchange for a happy life free of aliens and information brokers with the man she loved. 

But the city is ever-changing. Nothing stays the same. You may try to change ahead of the city, engage in the pursuit of endless evolution, but to do so is pointless. The city changes, and if you are not ground down by its concrete wheels you will wind up changing alongside it. That is a law humans and legends alike must obey.

The rider was returned to her head. Or is it: "The head was returned to the rider."? English is so strange about possessives. Whichever the case, a clear line was drawn between the rider-her head, and that line would not be broken. Not by a man with a liquorice voice, or by the man who embodied strength. And certainly, undoubtedly, not by the one who loved her. To hurt her and reduce her to his level would be an act of abuse, not love. He knew this, and watched as she rode away without trying to stop her. **But he did not let her go.** (Or is it: " He did not let go of her."? Either is inadequate to describe the love he held.)

With the return of her head came memories, and with those memories came the knowledge of her forgotten duties. Still she loved the man -never, in a thousand year, had she known another like him, or been known so utterly- but as much as the body loved to remember him and the head loved to learn about him, she had to leave. Her heart grew still. Duty called her home, to the place which had chosen her.

She left without goodbye's. This human-like aberration did not want to cause her aberration-like human friends any more pain than necessary. It would be impossible for them to understand her duties as a Dullahan. They would try and stop her, she would have to oppose them -no. No more fighting. She left, and no-one stopped her. Back across the sea she traveled, to Ireland once again. 

She was not the only one to make the trip. Another followed after her. And soon, even Celty would hear the urban legends surrounding him.

* * *

Even as the world changes, some things remain. Ireland was so different now. But her duties were the same as they had been for centuries. She fell back into them with an ease that frightened her. On a motorcycle she rode, calling upon the soon-to-die. The Black Rider returned.

Her time with Shinra was a drop in the bucket of her life, barely a fraction of her centuries. Their time together was so short, it was as if it had never happened. But it had happened, and she was not the same. Having known joy, having known love and friendship her previous existence was no longer enough. She left Ikebukuro, thinking she would grow from her experiences to become a better Dullahan and individual. But instead of growing stronger, she felt weak without her loved ones beside her. She was a worse Dullahan than ever before, and knew it, but could not bring herself to care. She missed them, and her loneliness was a biting pain. 

People began to catch glimpses of her, and she let them. Once upon a time she would have fled, or drenched them in blood but now she was hungry for any contact at all, besides the soon-to-die. When a group of Irish Travelers caught her tending to Shooter outside of Belfast, she stayed to talk with them. And from them, she learned a wonderful thing.

They told her about an urban legend making its way out of Dublin, concerning a miraculous doctor. A strange young man who took no pay, and appeared without warning at the bedsides of those suffering from fatal disease. His lab coat was moon-white, his eyes ever roaming. He was a man in search of something.

All of his patients lived, they said. Each person he visited would soon recover. Here one day and gone the next, he was impossible to track down. With some of the more serious cases, the only evidence he had come was the peculiar calling card he always left. A bucket of water perched on top of the door, in imitation of that old children's prank. To open the door and be soaked meant the invalid would live. 

When Celty heard all this, her world began to shake. Or so it looked to her -the hand holding her head had begun to tremble, and she had to grip her head carefully with both hands before her vision steadied out. This is him, the body said. Shinra came! But the head did not believe (she had not known him directly), and refused to consider it. This was only a rumor, a campfire tale the Travelers had told her for fun that happened to match up with the man she had known. Shinra was home in Ikebukuro, happy and safe with the rest of her friends. That was how it had to be -she saw him happy with them in her dreams, and would wake with a terrible ache. No one else could walk the path beside her. She told herself this, and tried to forget. Still, after she and the Travelers parted, she rode to Dublin. Chasing the faintest flame of a hope.

* * *

At first, things were the same in Dublin as they had been in Belfast. She did not regret coming, because it was nice to see new scenery. But it would be a lie to say she did not feel pangs of disappointment.

Gradually, though, more rumors came to her. The man in a lab coat was in the city, they said. One underground zine even ran an interview with him, after he supposedly saved a dying writer of theirs. The interview was only two lines long. "What are you searching for?" the writer asked. "My heart." the doctor replied, with the odd little smile he always wore. From this interview the legend got its name: they called him "The Heartless Doctor". Celty tore the page concerning the doctor out of the zine and kept it nestled within her shadows, next to her heart. 

She roamed the city at night when there was no one to visit, searching without daring to name the one she searched for. Without daring even to put her hopes into thought. But through all the nights, she could not find him. The Heartless Doctor was only another urban legend, it seemed. She stopped her searching, and returned to work. 

Celty pulled Shooter up to another apartment, and sighed. Pulled out the bucket of blood (disgusting, but necessary) and trudged up the steps one-by-one. She knocked on the door, ready to drench anyone unfortunate enough to answer. But no one answered her. She rang again -the door was open a crack, and she could tell people were inside. Again, no one came so she impatiently set down the basin of blood and opened the door-

-and was drenched herself by a falling bucket of water. Celty was so surprised, she almost dropped her head. There, standing beside the bedside, was her doctor.

"Sh-sh-sh-Shinra!!"  
"Celty!" he cried. "One moment, I'm just finishing up here."

She could not tell if she was shaking because of the cold water or the shock of seeing him. Her cheeks were warm with tears.

"You're going to ask how I managed to come and why I've been doing this. I love you, Celty. Head and all. I knew that wherever you were in the world, I wanted to be there. But on the plane ride over here, I realized I couldn't come to you as I was. You left because you had no more place in my world. So I've decided to make a place for myself in yours. I'm a legend now, Celty, the same as you. And I'm a story that's here to stay."

Her dead heart quickened. Love swept her away, stronger than the memories or duty. She forgot the bucket of blood on the doorstep, and waited. When they left, they left together. 

In Dublin, they tell of urban legends who walk among us, and a man who became a legend in order to be with the woman he loves. The Doctor who found his heart, the Rider who found her head. Two aberrations of life and death, clothed in black and white. They walk a lonely road together. And that is enough for happiness.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second time attempting fanfic ever, and my first time showing it to anyone. So please, Comment and Critique! I'm happy to learn/correct any mistakes. I want my writing to be the best it can be.
> 
> Durarara has such a strong emphasis on urban legends and this aberration/human dichotomy (in the first arc, at least) that I wanted to see have a pay-off in the end. Love isn't tearing the other person down to your level. If Celty can't be human-like, then Shinra would become a legend/aberration himself.
> 
> Pay me, Narita. Or at least take notes for next time.


End file.
